Interesting trademark case in Illinois. There was a small local place called Burger King before the chain wanted to move into the area. They went to court and the big BK can’t use the name within that area (~20 miles) and the local BK can’t use the name outside the area.

For a similar reason I believe Seven-Eleven stores in Indianapolis were unable to use the trademarked name because there was a local chain with that name. So they were all called Super 7. I don't know if that's still the case, this was a while ago.

They changed the name to 7-11 when they extended their hours to be open from 7 am to 11 pm. Later it became a 24-hour store, but at the time they made the change it was fairly novel for a store to be open that late.

Could they grant the right to use the trademark with the language saying something like "We allow this business to continue to use our trademark because have believe that not suing this particular restaurant is better for our corporate image. In the future, we will respond to similar sorts of infringement however we see fit."

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I recall that there was a 100 year old restaurant named McDonalds, and McDonalds took action against them. I'm surprised that companies like McDonalds couldn't draft something like the above so that they don't have to damage their image by trying to sue some 90 year old steakhouse.

In 1994, McDonald's successfully forced Elizabeth McCaughey of the San Francisco Bay Area to change the trading name of her coffee shop McCoffee, which had operated under that name for 17 years. "This is the moment I surrendered the little 'c' to corporate America," said Elizabeth McCaughey, who had named it as an adaptation of her surname.[14]

What's fucked about this case is that if it was in America McDonald's would have probably won and Scottish-Americans would have lost the right to use their own names. Honestly, they're probably doing some legal preemptive work right now

There's one in Norway as well. A guy named McDonald had a small restaurant in a tiny norwegian town. He got sued, but it was thrown out immediately since any business with only one owner by law must include the last name of the owner in the legal name.

American law being based on English Common law is really only relevant for state common law, and most state law is codified now. It didn't even go for all of the US, as Louisiana was based on Napoleonic code. Statutes don't "prevent" fee shifting because it's the default rule. One side will only ever pay for another's fees if a statute allows for it, and even then judges can limit that.

Your link isn't working. I'm pretty sure its because of the parentheses inside the link, messing up reddit's formatting and cutting off the last parenthesis in the link. I'm not sure how you could fix it other than just posting the link on it's own.

Alternatively, anyone trying to use the link can add the last parenthesis themself and it should work.

But not that much. We have these rules in Germany as well. What you can recover is the base pay that is regulated in the legal fee laws. Meaning if you divide to get a lawyer that costs exessivly more money, you will only recover what a normal lawyer would cost.

Except what happens if a small company needs to sue a big one. The big one has an army of lawyers. Even if the small company is in the right and the large company is infringing on their trademark there is a chance they would lose, and paying the big companies legal fees could be devastating.

The thing is that you don't pay what the lawyer of the other side costs in reality. What you.pay are the fees that are standardized in the legal fee laws, which is the minimum you pay your lawyer. So, even if the big company has a large team of lawyers, they can only recover the basic costs

Nah hit their revenue, not profit. Otherwise you have Hollywood accounting disappearing all profits every year and nothing changes. Hit them with a 5%+ revenue fine and then they will have to choose between obeying the law or go broke.

McDonald's claimed trademark because they had registered Big Mac as both a product and as the name of a burger chain. And since it was also the name of a chain, Supermacs was too similar, so to defend their trademark, McD thought they had to sue. But the EU court rightly ruled that Big Mac couldn't be a trademark for a burger chain if there wasn't a burger chain called Big Mac, so they voided the trademark for the burger chain. Which was the same trademark as the one for the actual burger. So they both got voided.

Here's the kicker: Basically all McD did to defend their trademark was send in screenshots of their own homepage showing that they have a burger called Big Mac. Total legal blunder that will be talked about for decades in the law profession.

On top of that: The whole "we have to sue/send NDAs to defend our trademark" thing is apparently almost never required. It seems to be more of a way to extort money than actually necessary to defend your trademark.

For your last paragraph: suing to protect your copyright is 100% necessary to keep it, in the US at least. I don’t know if it’s different in the EU, but “not protecting your copyright” is 100% a way to get it voided and for it to enter the public domain. Names like Elevators, Hoover’s, and Aspirin used to all be brand names before they all entered the public lexicon and now the respective companies that created them can’t enforce their copyrights/trademarks. McDonalds absolutely needs to sue businesses that use similar names to Big Mac if they don’t want it to just become a short hand for a “large, generic fast food chain burger.”

Case in point: Nintendo had a marketing campaign back in the 90s to remind people that only their consoles were Nintendo’s, and the other consoles weren’t. In some alternate time line Nintendo might’ve lost the trademark and we might be referring to the X-Box 1 as a Nintendo just like people from the south call A&W a ‘Coke’

Yes, this happened quite often, but this is separate from people using similar names. I think it's rather complicated and I'm no expert, but I think it boils down to: shaping public use of your trademark is more important than making sure nobody uses similar names.

Not necessarily greed. At least in the US, if you own a trademark for something and a single guy opening a small business has something a brand or something that could be similar enough to yours, and you don't file an infringement claim, all claims you have to the trademark can be rescinded. Essentially, if you have a trademark and don't go after anyone who could be considered close to infringing, you lose that trademark entirely. So not all of these 'evil' companies go after the little guy because they want to; often it's because they have to in order to maintain their trademark. And in this situation, a fast food joint selling any kind of Mac that describes a burger and has almost 100 locations would definitely be large enough to have to go after. Source

In fact, the Intellectual Property Office actually sided with McDonalds at first, saying they were too similar. In the end, the ONLY reason McDonalds lost is because they hadn't done their due diligence and register their trademark specifically in Ireland. Source

I'd actually argue that this is a murder, or at the very least better than the regular garbage in new. It's a targeted jab against McDonald's, with important context included and a genuinely hilarious post. But yeah it's not perfectly aligned.

McDonald's held a trademark for Big Macs covering "goods and services". The problem the EUIPO found was you can't actually get a Big Mac service - I mean the restaurants are called McDonalds - not "Big Macs". EUIPO decided that MacDonald's handn't used the trademark genuinely for restaurants, or even burgers. If you don;t use it - you lose it.

What is worth mentioning is also in August 2019, the EUIPO ruled McDonalds isn't allowed to exlusively claim dibs on prefixing "Mc-" to its products in Europe (though they are allowed on some products).

I guess so. McDonald is a Scottish surname, anglicized from Scots Gallic which is a Gaelic language very closely related to Irish, So nobody from an area where Scottish or Irish surnames are prevalent would assume that.

I'd be surprised to hear of court cases where that argument wasn't brought up - McDonald is a common name, and presumably the McDonald's founder was an American with Scottish heritage (or a Scottish immigrant).

Came here to say this. It amazes me how native speaking people cannot use proper English. It makes no sense. "Big Mac is"? You don't say chair's or table's, how hard is it to understand basics of English plural?

If anybody visits Ireland, I can't recommend Supermacs enough for fast-food standard. If you're craving for fast food, try this before any other ones.

The burgers are better in my opinion, but they also have some other things that you would only find in an Irish chipper, like Garlic Mayo Cheese Chips (really..... REALLY fucking good. Especially if you're hungover) or Taco Chips (Fries with taco sauce, ground beef and cheese on top). And the desert of my Irish college life was absolutely their ice cream muffin. They'd cut a chocolate muffin in half, heat it up and put a big ol' shcoop of ice cream in the middle of it. Sex on a spoon.

Some Supermacs even have a deal with Papa John's so you can get all that stuff and a pizza on top.

wtf companies? there's a similar case in Germany. Telecom sued them for using an pink T as trademark. They used it even years before telecom, but still telecom won. Nice to hear the big players get some handcuffs.

Ah good old Superman’s! Dub here and have been going to the ‘macs on Connel St there the last 25 years!

Can’t say it’s gourmet or anything but it’s seriously decent fast food. in&out reminds me of them in the US.

This case was all over the media here the last while and it was, of course, full of humor. But under it all it shows how giants like McDonalds operate and what they are prepared to do...i wonder in the face of this defeat will they try different strategies now in dealing with that similar cases.

I am so glad that ANYONE had a win like this but even more that it was Supermacs and any kind of trolling like this is nice to see regardless.

Obviously I'm no lawyer, and this has already been settled, but does the "mac" part of "big mac" (and therefore also Supermac's) not come from "Mac Donald's"? It seems to me like they do sort of have claim to that name origin, it's just that McDonald's has been around for so long in our culture that people have lost sight of where it originally came from.

Also, if any of y'all are ever in Ireland, Supermac's is really good. My Irish friends told me they tried to expand to New York, but were blocked by McDonalds. Wouldn't be surprised if McDonalds tried this as a bit of retaliation that backfired